iAmCaffeine wrote:If you don't renew your premium membership halfway through a tournament that requires it, then you no longer qualify for the tournament.

Yep, and it sounds like a rigged payola kickback set-up to me.

Nice premium.

Shut up, yes, I'm currently Premium, probably for the last time, but for the majority of my days here I have been Freemium and will be again. In any case, I don't think I'm somehow better when my insignia is Gold, but I admit it does make life easier around here, maybe too easy.

Besides, I've always paid for my Premium with my skill at earning credits,, which probably still makes me a second-class citizen around here, since CC's bottom line is all about the generation of cold hard cash...

iAmCaffeine wrote:If you don't renew your premium membership halfway through a tournament that requires it, then you no longer qualify for the tournament.

Yep, and it sounds like a rigged payola kickback set-up to me.

Nice premium.

Shut up, yes, I'm currently Premium, probably for the last time, but for the majority of my days here I have been Freemium and will be again. In any case, I don't think I'm somehow better when my insignia is Gold, but I admit it does make life easier around here, maybe too easy.

Besides, I've always paid for my Premium with my skill at earning credits,, which probably still makes me a second-class citizen around here, since CC's bottom line is all about the generation of cold hard cash...

iAmCaffeine wrote:This is one of several major issues with auto-tournaments that have been left unaddressed for months.

I wonder if it's going to be sorted out. Fairly simple, if a player deadbeats a game, eject them from the tournament.

Trouble is, there's no provision for doing that in an autotournament. Autotournaments are designed to run free of human intervention once they've started. Making them do things like replace players midstream would apparently require the rewrite of the basic code, and the BW is busy with other projects and isn't willing to make any major rewrites right now.

Dukasaur wrote:Trouble is, there's no provision for doing that in an autotournament. Autotournaments are designed to run free of human intervention once they've started. Making them do things like replace players midstream would apparently require the rewrite of the basic code, and the BW is busy with other projects and isn't willing to make any major rewrites right now.

Sure but on a website that has such a good community, it would be possible instead to get a few volunteers to spend a couple of hours a week to scour through the auto tournaments and prune out players that have deadbeated?

The auto tournaments are a great idea (hence why I've joined some since rejoining CC) but it's broken when people are forced to points dump for whatever reason. That's before going into the fact that some tournaments are won and lost by if you got the 5 free match wins by playing the deadbeat.

If you are able to talk with the new owner, perhaps consider either extending the power of the existing volunteers OR getting a new one or two to sort this issue out.

Dukasaur wrote:Trouble is, there's no provision for doing that in an autotournament. Autotournaments are designed to run free of human intervention once they've started. Making them do things like replace players midstream would apparently require the rewrite of the basic code, and the BW is busy with other projects and isn't willing to make any major rewrites right now.

Sure but on a website that has such a good community, it would be possible instead to get a few volunteers to spend a couple of hours a week to scour through the auto tournaments and prune out players that have deadbeated?

The auto tournaments are a great idea (hence why I've joined some since rejoining CC) but it's broken when people are forced to points dump for whatever reason. That's before going into the fact that some tournaments are won and lost by if you got the 5 free match wins by playing the deadbeat.

If you are able to talk with the new owner, perhaps consider either extending the power of the existing volunteers OR getting a new one or two to sort this issue out.

I would love to do what you're suggesting. Would dearly love to.

It just isn't possible. Mad777 has been running tests in this regard, and any tampering with the player list once the tournament has begun causes it to crash out and go into semi-manual mode, and once a tourney falls into semi-manual mode, it won't refire and re-enter auto mode and has to be finished manually. The problem is right at the heart of the engine, which was never designed to allow for the possibility of replacing players and needs to be rewritten.

Unfortunately bigWham has other projects on the go and rebuffs all our suggestions that it's time to rewrite the autotournament engine to fix this and other problems. If you want to take a crack at influencing him, you could always write to him directly. Unlike previous owners, BW does not block PMs.

Dukasaur wrote:Trouble is, there's no provision for doing that in an autotournament. Autotournaments are designed to run free of human intervention once they've started. Making them do things like replace players midstream would apparently require the rewrite of the basic code, and the BW is busy with other projects and isn't willing to make any major rewrites right now.

Sure but on a website that has such a good community, it would be possible instead to get a few volunteers to spend a couple of hours a week to scour through the auto tournaments and prune out players that have deadbeated?

The auto tournaments are a great idea (hence why I've joined some since rejoining CC) but it's broken when people are forced to points dump for whatever reason. That's before going into the fact that some tournaments are won and lost by if you got the 5 free match wins by playing the deadbeat.

If you are able to talk with the new owner, perhaps consider either extending the power of the existing volunteers OR getting a new one or two to sort this issue out.

I would love to do what you're suggesting. Would dearly love to.

It just isn't possible. Mad777 has been running tests in this regard, and any tampering with the player list once the tournament has begun causes it to crash out and go into semi-manual mode, and once a tourney falls into semi-manual mode, it won't refire and re-enter auto mode and has to be finished manually. The problem is right at the heart of the engine, which was never designed to allow for the possibility of replacing players and needs to be rewritten.

Unfortunately bigWham has other projects on the go and rebuffs all our suggestions that it's time to rewrite the autotournament engine to fix this and other problems. If you want to take a crack at influencing him, you could always write to him directly. Unlike previous owners, BW does not block PMs.

I have made a suggestion but got pushed back (I suggested to monitor only the special event Auto Tournament as a start and those having easy format)...There is a way to remove deadbeat from Auto Tournament (AT) and get it to continue to move on. After some testing in Beta, and using idea from one of my prior Tournament Director, I decided to experiment it in the live site and with this one (I knew I would have deadbeat since the lenght of that tournament is over a year) - the only restriction is I have to get an even number to remove and to allow the next round to be working as advertise (1v1 - best of 11). So far so good, we started with 100 player and after 20 rounds the roster is down to 68...Keep in my the AT setup has to be re-write anytime I remove player(s) from the current round to the last round to make sure all meet the new criteria, not saying it's huge time consuming but it is time to spend in it for sure.

Now for the all the current AT (279 as of now) it would take several people working 24/7 to ensure all AT are screened and followed...this would be a full time job believe me.

Let's say you have that amount of people to work it out, you will now face another issue dealing with more "complex" format, such as USA Supertournament event, each round use different game type, therefore removing player could create a complete lockout not being able to fullfill basic feature such as - even number of player (can't do Poly nor 1v1 until another deadbeat is found) - at this point the value to even re-write the AT engine isn't really helping since using the Old fashion way (Casual Tournament) to be as quick if not faster to put it together.

I have said many time that deadbeat to be an issue disregarding which Tournament style your are using, TO will have to scratch his/her head to reinvent the wheel if too many player decide to drop...The main request we are having with webmaster is the addition of the Team game type (Dubs, Triples, Quads) into the AT code, it kind of exist but in semi-auto and it is painful to use and not really trustworthy, I'm currently testing another AT in the live site that use the Doubles game type, and here we go I'm now stuck in Round 5 because one player has been banned until August...I can remove team but my tournament structure is screwed because the AT engine doesn't accept player substitution, the reason been is that it lock the player data at the tournament start and this is an irreversible state, therefore all data gathered from the beginning of the tournament can't be transfer to another player (like standing, points, etc...).The other request was to make the Round Robin mode more friendly to code...again, I've made testing that work but if any deadbeat then the entire tournament is trash.

Hope this help to have a better understanding, this AT is very complex and I can understand it would be time consuming to make an upgrade of this nice tool, but like Duke said our webmaster is working on other project that he feels to have more value that what is already existing and need to be fix/upgraded.

iAmCaffeine wrote:If you don't renew your premium membership halfway through a tournament that requires it, then you no longer qualify for the tournament.

Yep, and it sounds like a rigged payola kickback set-up to me.

Nice premium.

Shut up, yes, I'm currently Premium, probably for the last time, but for the majority of my days here I have been Freemium and will be again. In any case, I don't think I'm somehow better when my insignia is Gold, but I admit it does make life easier around here, maybe too easy.

Besides, I've always paid for my Premium with my skill at earning credits,, which probably still makes me a second-class citizen around here, since CC's bottom line is all about the generation of cold hard cash...

This is simply not true. The amount of $$ that this site collects is absolutely and positively paltry. No one is sitting on the beach because of CC. I for one GLADLY pay my premium subscription yearly and have on occasion gifted subs to people who had lost jobs or what not and did not feel right paying even such a small amount given their life situation.

I don't know you in RL, but I really can't understand why you would hold such a negative opinion about a site and a group of people who run said site. A year's subscription is one dinner out in most of the developed world.

As for the ATs. In the most recent rounds of some of my USA Supers we've been playing assassin, only there have been 1 or 2 deadbeats in every single game and roughly 4 or 5 of them my target has been a deadbeat, which means I basically have to sit there for 3 rounds until I know who my target is. Sure I can try and work it out but in a 12 player game it's not so simple. By that point at least one or two people usually have a clear advantage. Just ruins the tournament and means I won't be joining any more of the USA Supers.